<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2024/mar/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />If the protagonist in the 2023 Palme d&rsquo;Or winning film, <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/so-well-an-article-on-article-370-23337359" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Anatomy of a Fall</a>, didn&rsquo;t murder her husband, then what&rsquo;s the point of the picture, a friend asks.&nbsp;
If you haven&rsquo;t watched Justine Triet&rsquo;s Oscar-nominated courtroom drama, it&rsquo;s about a writer-couple, living with their visually impaired &nbsp;son, in an isolated chalet, in the French Alps.
Husband dies, falling off a ledge. We don&rsquo;t know if this is suicide, or murder. Wife is the only suspect.&nbsp;
The way the plot is delivered from the film&rsquo;s first shot onwards, with zero run-up, and a crucial sequence cut with merely sound for action, inside a courtroom&mdash;Anatomy of a Fall deserves the <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/seeing-india-through-its-pms-lens-23336156" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Best Original Screenplay Oscar</a>.
We don&rsquo;t know, for sure, how the man died. Does it matter? No. It&rsquo;s imagination. It would matter, 100 per cent&mdash;if it concerned truth, i.e. inevitably stranger than fiction.&nbsp;
Such as the Netflix documentary series, The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth. Which should&rsquo;ve been titled, <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/hand-john-ji-a-padma-award-no-23335029" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">The Sheena Bora Murder Story</a>.&nbsp;
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2024/mar/Shaana-Levy-Bahl_e.jpg" alt="The directors of the Netflix series Uraaz Bahl and Shaana Levy-Bahl" width="1280" height="720" /> The directors of the Netflix series Uraaz Bahl and Shaana Levy-Bahl
Indrani is prime accused. Sheena, 25, is the girl who allegedly died&mdash;initially reported to be thrice-married Indrani&rsquo;s sister, who turned out to be her daughter, from the first husband!
What was so fascinating in this tabloid story, about a girl gone missing, from Bandra, Bombay, since 2012? The case only surfaced in 2015&mdash;once a dead-body, most mysteriously got discovered in a dumping ground, two hours away from the city, three years hence!&nbsp;
Have to admit, the salaciousness of it all emerges first from Indrani herself, evidently a social climber&mdash;with <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/first-5-letters-of-cholesterol-love-23333834" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">anonymous husbands</a>, tucked away in Shillong, Calcutta.&nbsp;
The latter, an accused in the Sheena murder case himself. Two children (Mekhael, included), she abandoned, in Guwahati for a decade and half. Essentially popping out babies, without accepting consequence.
Restarting her life in Bombay, thereafter, as a media baroness of sorts, since married to ex-Star TV boss, Peter Mukerjea, and raising a daughter (visibly disturbed, Vidhie) from her second husband, alongside.&nbsp;
What&rsquo;s it about Indrani that struck an uncomfortable chord with urban upper-classes? Can&rsquo;t speak for all, but there&rsquo;s an array of characters you encounter, particularly, in the outgoing social life of singles in big cities.&nbsp;
You get acquainted to people, presuming a sense of trust&mdash;often knowing little about their past lives. This is how relationships of any sort start. As it did between Peter and Indrani while, I&rsquo;m guessing, he couldn&rsquo;t have full clue of who she really was?
Also, my enduring memory from the Indrani-Peter episode is socialite Suhel Seth&rsquo;s The Telegraph column then&mdash;effectively about rich, frisky uncles, still the boys&rsquo; club, termed &ldquo;wicked bachelors&rdquo;, including Suhel, ravenously sussing out a rare, charming woman, as she walks into a bar with Alyque Padamsee, the old ad-man, subsequently abandoned for the evening!&nbsp;
Suhel checks on Indrani a couple of days later. Peter tells him she&rsquo;s hers. Suhel moves on! Can&rsquo;t tell, who&rsquo;s playing whom.&nbsp;
But the Netflix doc-series, filmed by husband-wife directorial duo, Urvaaz Bahl and Shaana Levy-Bahl, rightly, isn&rsquo;t as much about the social scene.&nbsp;
Shot well&mdash;Bombay looks stunning&mdash;structured smartly, the series is about young Sheena, who disappeared, and then believed to be dead.&nbsp;
Foremost, I&rsquo;m relieved, this isn&rsquo;t a Bollywood flick. As with the mini-biopic, Ladies First (2017), also on Netflix, that the Bahls directed, on ace-archer Deepika Kumari, as her sprightly self, leading up to 2016 Rio Olympics&mdash;instead of, say, Deepika Padukone, in the same role!
Sheena was evidently in love with Peter&rsquo;s son, Rahul&mdash;the only piece in the psychotic jigsaw puzzle, who cares that Sheena isn&rsquo;t around since April 24, 2012.&nbsp;
The case against Indrani is she killed her daughter that night, with the help of her driver, and ex-husband. There&rsquo;s allegation that Peter was possibly in the know.&nbsp;
Wealth, getting passing on either as inheritance, or siphoned off from INX Media, the failed media-empire envisioned by Peter-Indrani, is also at the heart of the case.&nbsp;
Of the four accused, only Indrani showed up for the series. Is she platformed lopsidedly, hence? I&rsquo;d say, no.&nbsp;
Let&rsquo;s say, you assume so, basis the fact that Indrani&rsquo;s claim of Sheena actually being the daughter from her late father&mdash;an unfounded allegation of incest-rape&mdash;gets dramatised in the series.&nbsp;
Or that the driver&rsquo;s involvement is debunked during a segment. The series is sufficiently two-sided still, for an ongoing case.&nbsp;
Going by the misleading trailer, the CBI, prosecuting Indrani, watched a special preview, before they gave a go-ahead. No such brouhaha over Indrani&rsquo;s own book, Unbroken (2023). I guess nobody reads in India.&nbsp;
Which brings me to the original question: Did Indrani murder Sheena, who she still believes is alive&mdash;probably watching this series!&nbsp;
I&rsquo;d rely more on the visual sub-text&mdash;as the camera rolls in the Indrani Mukerjea Story, despite interruptions during interviews, capturing portions that are meant to be off-record.&nbsp;
The Bahls tell me, &ldquo;As filmmakers, the idea there is to gain insights on characters&mdash;we couldn&rsquo;t have planned for unscripted moments.&rdquo;&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s during these moments that you feel convinced, as an audience&mdash;yeah, man, it&rsquo;s her. She&rsquo;s not acquitted yet. Courts will decide. She could still get on Bigg Boss, though! Her &lsquo;brother&rsquo;, later son, Mekhael, I&rsquo;m told, has already made it to the Bengali Bigg Boss.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.
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Now that the Indrani Mukerjea story is back for a chatter-starter, imperative to weigh in, again, on the tragic murder case

So, no one killed Sheena Bora too?

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So, no one killed Sheena Bora too?

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